


Whatever our souls are made of

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Category: Last Tango In Halifax
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27961124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: Calamity has always had more than enough family to go ‘round, but Flora is something special.“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Whatever our souls are made of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [throughadoor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/throughadoor/gifts).



> Title and summary quote from _Wuthering Heights_. Happy yuletide, throughadoor, I hope at least some of this is what you had in mind. <3

_Twelve_

Get-to-know-you games are the worst, they always make Calamity want to talk shit, but it never pays off because they are, by definition, games played to get to know people she’ll be expected to interact with again, and if she lies too much, either she’ll have to remember what she said, or she’ll have to resign herself to a few awkward interactions in the future when she forgets. She’s on her second day at the new school, though, and she’s caught on to the fact that the introductions portion of the day will be just about the same in every class she starts, so she’s got her interesting fact about herself all queued up by the time her literature instructor gets around to her.

“My name’s Emily Jane Greenwood, but you can call me Calamity, everyone does, and my interesting fact is that, you know that youtube video that went viral all over again a few years ago, Baby Sheep Rodeo? I was one of the babies, it’s my best mate Flora’s big brother’s channel. When I fell off that last sheep at the end, I broke a finger, and my dad went spare.”

Being a minor-minor semi-local youtube semi-celebrity has its perks. It’s a cool-enough-sounding story that Calamity sticks out in people’s minds, but it doesn’t actually make her look like a bad kid to the teacher, name aside, and anyway, Lawrence always appreciates it when Calamity can drum up a little extra enthusiasm for the channel. Calamity’s also got a stack of stickers Angus’s artist big sister designed with the channel’s website on it, but she’ll probably wait until a few days after introductions before she starts putting them up on walls and street signs nearby. This school seems like they kind that might mind, no sense in making it easy for them to catch her.

_Fifteen_

Calamity does, actually, really love her step-great-grandmother Celia, but if Celia says one more word about that _Sixteen and Pregnant_ program, and the girls in it, Calamity is going to scream. Instead, she just says, “Well, if you don’t like it so much, why do you keep watching it?”

Great-Grandad Alan chuckles and gives her a little salute like she’s scored a point, and Flora smiles at her faintly from beneath her eyelashes, and it’d be a win, except that Celia only says, “Well, it’s not like there’s much of anything else on,” and bulldozes on like Calamity never said a word.

It’s not because some of the not-so-kind things she’s saying could cut a little bit close to the bone for Calamity, who exists because of such a, well — _calamity_ — or even that her parents are the second generation to do so; Calamity’s mum and her Gran can look after themselves, after all. It’s not even because Celia has taken to sniffing disapprovingly when Calamity goes out in a particular pair of shorts in the summer, or that some of her more pointed comments tonight have been accompanied by dark little flicks of her gaze in Calamity’s direction. No, at any other time, she might have been a little amused, or at least determined enough to seem unbothered to make even herself believe it a bit. The thing is, with bringing this up over dinner tonight, Celia’s timing is really very bad.

Flora’s late. On her period, that is. She told Calamity this morning near the school gates before they headed in for the day, and then Calamity snuck out the back gate behind the science building to walk-run the half-mile down the road to the chemist and back before lunch was over to buy a test, and as soon as dinner with the Grands is over, she and Flora are going to lock themselves in the upstairs toilet, pretend they’re painting their nails, and find out if Flora is about to become one of the girls with ruined chances who Celia will not stop talking about.

When they bolt for the stairs after helping with the clearing up, Celia asks what color they’re painting their nails and, improvising wildly, Calamity declares that it’ll be green. She thinks she has a green pen in her bag so they can improvise, anyway. Celia clucks again in vague disapproval, says, “When I was a girl, we didn’t have all these bizarre colors — the only color of nail varnish was red, and when you saw a woman wearing it, you knew all you needed to know about her.”

“Now, Celia,” Alan says, drawing her into the other room, and Calamity grabs Flora’s arm with one hand and her school bag in the other and makes a break for it.

A moment later, test taken, just waiting on the results, Flora sits up on the lip of the bathtub and drums her fingers against the tile. “And do you know what the worst bit is?” she asks, shiny little school shoes scuffing back and forth on each other.

“That Celia’ll try to get her fifteen minutes of fame by getting you on that program, if it’s positive?”

Calamity is rewarded by a weak, reluctant little giggle, but after a breath, Flora shakes her head. “No,” she says, and her voice is soft, shaking a little. “The worst bit is — he said it, he promised, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even love me.”

And that’s as may be, Calamity’s as aware as anyone that her parents’ love story that started with a game of truth or dare at age fourteen and never really stopped was hardly the normal way of things, but now Flora is crying, she looks small and she looks alone and _that_ , Calamity is fairly sure, is the actual worst bit.

This is the moment, Calamity thinks, where if this were a film, she’d sweep Flora into her arms, and Flora, who has always been an unfairly pretty crier, would sob a few more demure tears into Calamity’s chest, and then they’d be alright. People don’t hug much, though, in Calamity’s family. Her granny, when Calamity had asked her about it once, had said, “I’m what you might call prickly,” and explained no further than that, and her mum is enough like her granny that strangers are apt to get confused and assume that her granny is her mum’s mum, instead of her dad’s. Dad’s more of a quiet sort, not prickly in the same way so much as _reserved_ , and the point is that while Calamity thinks, in her mind, that this would be the right moment to go in for a hug, her body doesn’t seem to know how to make that thought a reality.

Instead, she slides down to the floor, with her back against the lip of the bathtub Flora is sitting on, rests her head on Flora’s knee, and wraps her hand firmly around Flora’s ankle. “How could anybody not love you?” she asks, voice softer and more plaintive than she wants it to be. “What absolute bloody waste of space could ever, ever not love you?”

As the words tumble out of her mouth, Calamity reflects that they are maybe not the most useful ones for Flora just now. They’re a truth Calamity feels in her _soul_ , way down deep where she knows things truer than she ever says out loud, almost, but maybe they’re not actually anything Flora can use, right now, when she’s so scared, so she goes on, “I’m with you ’til the end, you know? I won’t ever leave you alone if you don’t want me to.”

It feels like the completion of the thought, in Calamity’s head, so when she’s done, she falls quiet. There are still a handful of quickly-ticking-by seconds on the timer Flora set on her phone, counting down until the moment they’ll know. Flora drops a hand into Calamity’s hair where her head is resting against Flora’s knee, and guilt crashes through Calamity, that Flora should be comforting her in this moment when Flora is so scared.

From downstairs, Celia calls, “Caroline’s on her way, love!” and Calamity casts her eyes up to meet Flora’s panicked, deer-in-the-headlights gaze. The timer is still counting down.

“We’ll be down in just a minute!” Calamity finally brings herself to yell back, strangled, and then strains to hear the creak of Celia’s feet walking away from the base of the stairs. Calamity thinks she can hear Celia’s mild, disapproving mumble, “No manners at all, what a wild one that girl is,” in her mind, if not in her ears from this distance and through the door. And then the alarm buzzes.

Flora looks down at the test in her hands, and Calamity’s hand spasms tighter and then looser where it’s still gripped around her ankle. She means it, she _will_ stick with Flora through any of this, through whatever it says. Calamity cannot imagine what cool, collected, gently-amused Caroline would say about a new baby in the family right at this exact minute — probably nothing too especially poisonous, since that’s not exactly Caroline’s style, and also because Calamity doesn’t think Caroline would especially want to hurt Gran or Calamity’s mum with a word out of turn, but she also knows that if the test is positive, it will throw a serious wrench in Caroline’s plan for both Flora and Calamity to start Uni early. Flora flicks her eyes back and forth between the display on the test and Calamity’s eyes, face sharp with nerves that don’t tell Calamity anything about what it says.

And then, finally, on a long, slow breath, “I’m not pregnant.”

_Nine_

It started very early, the Uni plan, which is probably why Calamity doesn’t question it much; Flora has always been a precocious child academically, and Calamity has always wanted to be wherever Flora is, and when you’re discussing the pros and cons of skipping a child a grade in school, and one of the cons is social development, it helps to justify things if you can skip two girls who are neck and neck in terms of their academics and fiercely loyal to each other together, so they end up put ahead into the same grade. If you’re Caroline, and you’re fully dazzled by the academic prowess of your miracle baby, the one part left alive of the love of your life, it gives you that little extra bit of permission to do what you already wanted to do, Calamity thinks.

So Flora and Calamity grew up racing each other through academic texts and ram pens they really ought not to be in, passing back and forth the novels of the English canon that John sends them both for Christmas — wrapped the same and signed the same on the card like he can’t remember which of them is meant to be somewhat several-times-removed a part of his family and which is not, and who knows, perhaps he doesn’t — and then splashing through the mud together to make it home for tea once they’ve finished.

They grow up a package deal, which is somewhat an accident of birth — both their own and Caroline and Gran’s — but also is a truth which Calamity thinks would certainly have dissolved a bit as they got older, if they hadn’t stuck so close together, hadn’t liked each other so much and made it so easy for their respective families to treat childcare arrangements as shared. Calamity’s mum says she always has enough of a full house with her own three, a polite girl like Flora barely makes a dent, and in exchange, Caroline is glad to give Flora a taste of the experience of growing up with a sibling by having Calamity around more often than not, and they’re both equally likely to be found scrambling around the farm after Calamity’s gran, who claims not to be a natural with children but never seems to mind too much being fairly well surrounded by them.

She doesn’t even seem to mind now, as she drops them both off for their first day of classes skipped ahead a year. “Now, I know you know better than me how school-kids look for a weakness,” she warns, warm and wary, scowling in that way that always lets Calamity know she’s loved, all that fierceness on her side, “So I want you girls to look out for each other, right?”

“‘Course, Gran,” Calamity agrees readily. Her gran ought to know, she thinks, that she’d never let anything bad happen to Flora.

But, “You too, Flora-belle, hmm?” Gran goes on. “Our Calamity, she’s a bit too much like me, that mouth on her can get her into a world of trouble.”

Calamity glances over at Flora, who nods her head solemnly, like a promise.

Gran grins, a rare smile, then reaches out with both hands to tousle both of their hair, and says, “That’s right, you’re good girls, I know you will. And Caroline will be here to pick you up right after school.” 

_Thirteen_

Kate’s not the only ghost Calamity knows, but she is the nicest. Calamity learned early on not to talk about the man in the barn since he only ever worries Gran, makes her go all tense and snappish, and Mum and Da only laugh at her, and neither of those are the kind of reaction she likes. Still she tells Flora about Kate, partially because she always tells Flora things, and partially because Calamity thinks it’s not fair, Flora never getting to meet her other mum. Lots of things aren’t fair, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fix the ones you have the chance to, Calamity thinks.

They’re thirteen and reading _Wuthering Heights_ , and they’re up a big hill because Caroline made a joke to herself about the location being appropriate and Calamity decided they should take her at her word, and at the point when Heathcliff is reunited with Cathy’s ghost, Flora snaps the book shut.

To be fair, it’s much more Calamity’s style of book, and not just because of her name. She doesn’t think it’s so strange, the idea of a love like that, a deep one that takes off when you’re far too young to know the commitment to it that you’re building inside yourself, a love that you’d follow anywhere. It’s a bit like that Gatsby bloke, too, and Flora hadn’t much liked that one either, now Calamity thinks of it. _Love shouldn’t break people like that_ she’d said at the time, and Calamity had known she’d been thinking of her mum, and of the years and years of sorrow over Kate’s death.

Calamity braces herself for another such declaration, rolling back in the high grass and fixing her eyes on the sun just as her da always tells her not to if she still wants to have eyes in her head by the time she’s twenty. Having eyes in her head for as long as she’s got a head sounds pretty good to Calamity, but she’s not convinced enough of the danger to deprive herself of the bright-dark sunspots she gets behind her eyelids when she stares for long enough and then squinches her eyes closed.

Instead, Flora says, “I think ghosts are the thing about books I’d most want to be real,” and Calamity rolls over to look at her, pleased to be surprised by the direction she takes.

Calamity doesn’t say anything yet because Flora can be a bit shy about sharing musings like this, and Calamity knows from bitter experience that if she interrupts too soon, she might not ever get to hear the end of the thought. After a moment, Flora goes on, “It must be nice — I mean, _this_ ,” and she gestures down at the book, “isn’t nice, but it seems like it would be _nice_ to think that a part of you might carry on, the part of you that loves someone, or something,” and her face looks so troubled that Calamity feels she’d give anything to soothe her, and then she remembers that maybe she can.

She says, “Great-grandda, he says that your house is haunted,” and Flora smiles faintly, not comforted, just amused, but Calamity’s not done yet.

“Yeah, the, uh, the counterfeiter,” Flora agrees, but Calamity pushes on, “Yeah, but when I’ve seen — when I saw someone in your house, it wasn’t any old coiner.”

“You saw something?” Flora sounds wary, like she thinks Calamity might be trying to pull something, make her the butt of the joke, but Calamity barrels on, “Yeah, like the barn man but not like the barn man, because the barn man is,” and here Calamity feels herself shiver, so she looks back up straight at the sun, trying to beam some of that warmth under her skin. Flora knows about the barn man because Calamity has told Flora about every time she has ever been afraid, probably. “The barn man is angry, and this was like that, but just, just warm instead of angry.”

“So what did you see?” Flora sounds a little more hesitant now.

“I saw — it was a sleepover, it was years and years ago, and I got up in the night for a glass of water, but when I walked down the hall, I could see your mum on the sofa for a minute and,” Calamity gulps because she’s never spoken about this one out loud before, and so the memory still feels fresh and warm and bright and secret inside her brain.

“And when I first looked, she was alone, she was drinking a glass of wine in this one spot of lamplight in the dark, and then I looked back and she had someone’s head in her lap, she was running her hands over someone’s hair and at first I thought it was _you_ , but I’d just left you in the bedroom. But I went and got my glass of water, when I walked back and looked, it was just Caroline again, she asked if I was alright but she looked, you know, all peaceful.”

“You thought it was me?” Flora asked, voice a little wobbly. Calamity nods.

“I did. But then I got back to the room and you were still fast asleep like I left you, and I think — I looked at the picture again, that morning at breakfast, and I think it was, you know. Her. Kate.”

Flora nods. “Mum says — mum said, once. That she and, um, Kate. and my mum. That some of the things about their relationship, that she wasn’t proud of,” she says, and there’s a little doubt in her tone not, Calamity doesn’t think, because Flora doesn’t believe her, but rather because she wants it to be true so much.

Calamity flaps the pretentious hardcover edition John got for them in Flora’s direction and says, “Isn’t this all about how love doesn’t have to be nice to be real?”

Flora nods, then says, “But what if I want it to be?” She flops dramatically down by Calamity’s side. “It’s one thing to read about a tragic romance because if they just had a nice talk about what they both wanted before Heathcliff went off to become Gatsby,” and oh, of course Flora sees it, too, Calamity grins with recognition, “Then there wouldn’t have been much of a book. But in real life, wouldn’t it have been better if they’d either both been true or both moved on?”

Calamity nods, and she can, indeed, see the wisdom in this, but she can also see Heathcliff standing there against the sun as she looks up, and she doesn’t think he could have moved on for anything, nice, frank talk about things or not. Calamity lies back in the grass and she burns.

_Sixteen_

It’s strange enough being one of only a scant handful of sixteen-year-olds starting university this term that Calamity thinks she should probably be embarrassed to be so singled out again when it turns out she’s on a first-name basis with one of her professors, but between Caroline and her dad, being an involuntary teacher’s pet is actually something that feels pretty familiar to her. In any case, the day’s been strange enough that when John turns out to be sitting at the front of the room in the literature course she’s been switched into at the last minute, she doesn’t even try to play it subtle, just plunks her bag down right in the front row.

He raises his eyebrows at her around what she’s largely certain is a visible hangover, and says, “Well hello there, Emily Jane.” He’s the only one who calls her that with any regularity — he says it’s because he’s always tickled by a literary reference, but Gran says it’s because he’s a wanker, and Caroline usually grimaces but reluctantly agrees. 

She flips him a lazy salute, pushes her chair back so it’s balancing on the back two legs, and jams her knees under the lip of the desk to steady herself. “‘Lo, John,” she says.

She could have headed to the back of the room, tried to keep her head down, and acted embarrassed if he tried to single her out, but if she’s learned anything from watching Caroline and Gran manage him when he’s crashed family holidays, it’s that giving John any kind of deference is asking to get walked all over. He’s most easily dealt with if you stand tall and don’t give him an inch.

He smiles uncomfortably back at her and moves on with his lesson, and it’s maybe a little annoying that he calls on her to talk any time he mentions a book he knows he gave her or Flora when they were going up, but Calamity’s not the type to mind the spotlight, so she just preens a little and answers back and does her best to push her lucky and say whatever it is in a cheeky way.

“How do you know the prof?” a guy she recognizes vaguely from another class asks her after, as they’re walking away down the corridor, and there are maybe a thousand ways she could answer that one, from “He’s the ex husband of the mum of my favorite person in the world” to “his son made me internet famous,” but there’s one answer which is by far the most fun, so she goes with that one. “He shagged my granny right around when I was born, so now he sends me books for Christmas.”

_Seven_

Mum and Da have shown the baby off to the Gran, to the great-grands, to Caroline, and even to our Gary, who Calamity has only ever met a handful of times, and who always slips her a little money, even though she’s only vaguely aware of its value as something she can exchange for candy. Flora was there when Caroline first held the baby, so it’s not quite the same, but now that all the grownups are sitting around the fire chatting, and the baby is dozing, Calamity takes Flora by the hand and shows her how to tiptoe over because her baby brother is _loud_ , and it’s her turn.

Da keeps saying that the so-far-unnamed baby is Calamity’s to look out for, Calamity’s baby brother, and what an important job that is, which Calamity wonders about, since she doesn’t see Angus or the other vague, older-brother-shape of Flora’s doing too much looking out for her, and Da doesn’t have any brothers or sisters so what does he know, anyway, but it’s hardly like Calamity objects to the job.

In a way, she feels sorry for the baby, who is going to grow up the only one his own age at family gatherings like this one, no Flora of his own to cling to. If having an older sister looking out for him helps to make up for any of that, she’s willing to give it a shot. And if this new baby is Calamity’s to look after, it seems only fair that Flora should have the chance to help out, if she wants. She’s got no baby brother of her own, sure, but anything that’s Calamity’s is Flora’s too, if she wants it.

[end]


End file.
